Posts Tagged ‘CodeClub’

Over the past few weeks we’ve run a number of events under the U18 strand, and will continue to do so in 2013. Following on from the success of hosting Young Rewired State at MadLab three years running, we’re keen to ensure that as many young people as possible can access dedicated events and learn more about the wealth of communities that exist around us…

Here’s a little taster of some of the things we’ve been up to:

Flashing LEDs
With support from The Ideas Foundation, we’ve started a year long project with three high-schools in Greater Manchester. After a training session with the teachers, 45 pupils came to MadLab one morning, and all built their own Arduino-based MiniPOV. We’re working with the brilliant Morecambe-based Shrimping It project on this. The next stage (in February) will involve robots (!). Encouragingly, one of the teachers has already ordered all the bits and pieces to run their own Ardunio project directly in the school…

Processing and Scratch
On Saturday 8th December over 40 people came to MadLab for the first CoderDojo. Like a youth club for geeks, CoderDojo takes place in venues across the world. Around 20 young people from 7 to 17 came along, with lots of interested parents and mentors. Big thanks to Kerry at AppSense for sending staff (Travis, Jason & Abdul) and food money along, and also to Sam, John, Matthew and Samuel for helping out. After an initial lunch and social we ended up with two workshops being run: Processing (upstairs – led by Travis from AppSense) and Scratch (led by 10-year old Dan!). We’re planning to hold this monthly, with the next one set for 5th Jan.

Meet the Funders
On 12th December we held a lunchtime event with Nesta, Nominet Trust and Mozilla around their new Digital Makers programme and fund. Over fifty people came along, from a whole range of organisations. Some interesting partnerships were being formed over lunch, so we’re looking forward to hearing about what proposals emerge as a result. Notes and questions from the session are now up online.

What next?
We’ve got three events scheduled for the first couple of weeks of 2013: